School Union Issue Going To 2nd Vote

What Orange County's non-instructional school workers will do about union representation was still unclear Friday night after two days of voting and five hours of counting ballots.

Asked to choose their current union, a new union or no union representation, the majority of workers said they want no union, a position supported by the Orange County School Board.

But the vote was by a margin too small to decide the election without a runoff -- less than 50 percent of the total votes.

Just which union will be in the runoff against the no-union vote was undecided because both unions got almost the same number of votes.

The state will examine 119 votes challenged by the three parties to decide which union will be in the runoff. Ballots were challenged when voters did not have proper identification, their names did not appear on personnel records, or they voted at a place where their names were not on the list of voters.

The Orange Educational Support Personnel Association, which was created by the local teachers union in a takeover attempt, got 900 votes. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees got 896 votes. That union has represented about 4,600 school bus drivers, teacher aides, clerks, custodians and cafeteria workers in Orange since 1978.

Nearly 70 percent of the 4,508 eligible workers voted in the election. Of those, 1,230 voted against union representation. Seventeen ballots were invalidated because the votes were unclear.

''One thing is clear,'' said John Robinson, executive director of the Orange County Classroom Teachers Association, which set up the new union. ''The employees of Orange County want a union. It's just a matter of which union they want. Collectively, over 1,700 people said 'We want a union.' ''

Harold Teague, Florida International Union Area Director for AFSCME, accused the state Public Employees Relations Commission of allowing the school board to determine the balloting sites and to set hours. The result was that the workers who favored the current union -- custodians, especially those on late shifts, and bus drivers -- found it very inconvenient to vote, he said.

Teacher aides, a group that favored the new union or no union, found it very convenient to vote, Teague charged. He said the union's legal staff will consider challenging the way the election was held.

A school board spokesman said he was delighted with the turnout.

''It's a question of who will be in the runoff,'' said Jim Scaggs, chief labor negotiator for the school board. ''Will the people who voted for a union really want to vote for the other union? They've got a clear choice with us: Let the board represent them, or protect them.''